


In Another World

by Morpheus626



Series: My Melancholy Blues [1]
Category: Queen (Band)
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-27
Updated: 2020-12-27
Packaged: 2021-03-10 21:47:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 935
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28354158
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Morpheus626/pseuds/Morpheus626
Summary: Tonight has turned rather melancholy for me, so that’s all I can manage to write in fic as well, it seems.Brian/Reader (gender neutral), and dealing with depression. Talking about time. Definite TW for depression and coping less than well with it in this, short as it is.
Relationships: brian may/reader
Series: My Melancholy Blues [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2076555
Comments: 1
Kudos: 5





	In Another World

“I’m fine,” you don’t mean to snap, but you don’t exactly do much to stop yourself either. It isn’t even directed at Brian, or anyone else, for that matter.

Purely at yourself.

“You sound fine,” Brian replies sarcastically. “Don’t make me ask again.”

You fight the urge to glare his way. He’s only getting frustrated because you’re unfairly taking out your feelings on him. “Okay. I’m not fine. Is that better?”

“Not really,” Brian sighs, and settles beside you on the couch. “You wouldn’t accept that answer from me in one of my darker moods, would you?”

“No,” you groan and lean back to shove your face into the corner of the couch.

His fingertips are warm on your chin as he reaches over to gently coax you back out of the material. “Well then, I can’t accept it from you either.”

What you don’t mention is how he’s been in one such mood himself over the last few days. He’s biked and swum and generally done his usual coping routines, but you can see it on him the same way you can see it on yourself. A heaviness, a haunting, that black hole that never fully closes but sits wide open and painful in the center of your chests.

It’s a double-edged sword, that. You both understand how it feels, which can make it wonderful to help each other through those times.

But when it hits both of you at the same time...that’s a different beast.

“I know,” you mutter instead, and lean into his hand.

He leads you as he adjusts himself to lay on the couch, only losing grasp for a moment when you make room for his legs around you. But his arms welcome you as you lay back against his chest, and despite his deep sigh, you feel something like better being surrounded by him.

He seems to feel the same, resting his chin softly on your head with a contented murmur.

“Can we pause time here?”

“Forever?” he asks.

“Maybe,” you sigh. “I think it would be easier than moving forward, sometimes.”

“I can’t blame you there,” he says. “It does feel like that, at times. But we both know that isn’t true.”

“Do we?” you ask and snuggle back against him, as if trying to meld yourself with him. “Maybe we just aren’t capable of understanding time truly. Maybe humans move through it all wrong.”

“And how would we go about changing that?” he poses the question with only a hint of joking in his voice, even if he finds your philosophical musings occasionally silly, he mostly takes them seriously and with legitimate interest. “How would we even know?”

“That’s the fucked up bit,” you whine. “We can’t know, so we can’t begin to figure out how to fix it. And meanwhile it helps make us miserable.”

“What about this moment makes you want to stay paused here?” his arms wrap around you; his hands covering yours and wrapping around your fingers, thumbs rubbing at the back of your palms.

“I’m with you,” you nearly whisper it.

You can feel his breath hitch, hear him swallow hard. “Aside from that?”

“Because if we pause here, maybe it can’t get any worse,” you reply, and there’s no stopping the tears you’ve been fighting off all day. “Aren’t there times you would go back and pause, if you could?”

You realize too late that you’re hitting on some sensitive topics without meaning to, though in retrospect it should have been obvious that you would.

But he only sighs shakily, and helps move you so you can lay almost sideways on his chest, so you can see each other. He’s not fighting off his tears either, anymore.

“There are. Too many to count, honestly,” his voice goes rough the harder he cries, and you can’t do much to help but to cling to him and let your own tears fall onto the sweater he’s wearing.

He sobs, and your heart breaks. You feel bad for having said anything; both of you are too deep into the pit of depression for this conversation.

“But,” he manages a moment later, with a few gasping breaths. “Then I wouldn’t be here, with you. If I’d paused any one of those times. And you can’t...”

He hesitates for a second. “You can’t choose, you know? Between the people in those moments. Between the feelings in those moments. Otherwise I think that’s all we’d do. Either stay paused for too long, or never start up time again. Only to realize that we’d missed out on some other moment where we’d want to pause. Do you get what I’m trying to say, Y/N?”

You nod and press your face into his chest, listening for his heartbeat. There’s plenty of sounds he’s made with Queen and his solo music that can calm you, but best of them all is that, the consistent beat under your ear.

He holds you there and hugs you tight, intertwining his legs with yours. There’s only barely room for it on the couch, but neither of you mind for now.

“This will pass,” you murmur, half to yourself, and half to him.

He nods. “It will. Too slowly, probably. But eventually.”

“So we can’t pause forever,” you say. “But we could take another five minutes here, probably?”

“I think we could,” he replies, his nose in your hair, lips kissing gently at your forehead. “Then we should see about forcing ourselves outside for a walk, or something like that.”

“...I could handle the garden, on the lawn chairs.”

“Garden it is.”


End file.
